India: Schools, not sweatshops

To members of the Indian Parliament and global leaders:

We call on you to immediately pass the Child and Adolescent Labour Abolition Bill. You have the power to abolish child labour under 14 years of age and ensure all children can go to school. We also call on India and all nations to put the eradication of child labour at the heart of national education plans and expand social protection programmes so that all children around the world go to school by the 2016 deadline set by the United Nations.

Posted: 19 December 2012The Indian Parliament is closing without passing the toughest child labour law in its history. Worse, the bill is supported by the majority of MPs, but was ignored for weeks, because they felt it was not a ‘priority’!

India is the world’s child labour capital -- kids as young as five are sold to traffickers and forced to work as modern-day slaves, abused and beaten. The historic new bill would ban outright any child labour under 14 and provide stipends for poor families to keep their children in school. But MPs have let it fall off their agenda, and Indian child rights groups say they badly need our help, now, to ramp up the public pressure.

If the Avaaz community comes together, we can create a wave of attention to the bill, and push MPs to vote. Sign this urgent petition -- when we reach 1 million we’ll deliver our message to the Parliament with former child workers.